Technology has a critical role to play in healthcare progress
The healthcare industry is not immune to the relentless march of transformational technologies, which are fundamentally transforming patient care, enabling precision medication and contributing to better outcomes.
The advent of emerging technologies – robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality – is further reshaping the ways in which medical information is shared, diseases are treated and new therapies are discovered. By embracing IT transformation, healthcare providers now have access to new opportunities to use data for personalised care and increased patient engagement.
By 2019, 60 per cent of healthcare devices and applications will collect real-time location and device data, and start to uncover patterns, according to Dell EMC forecasts. We are headed towards a future in which data and its analysis will become a key asset to any healthcare organisation. Today, however, 81 per cent of global healthcare leaders say they still cannot act in real-time using this information.
In the GCC, the innovation agenda is led by the government, which has prioritised health care and backed it with investment in the upgrading of hospitals and in building gold-standard innovative systems for healthcare administration. The UAE is at the forefront of ushering in these developments under the Vision 2021, aiming to create a world-class, technology-enabled healthcare system. Saudi Arabia aims to increase the private sector contribution to healthcare spending to 35 per cent by the year 2020, as outlined by the Saudi National Transformation Programme 2020.
The leadership in the Middle East recognises technology transformation as the key stepping stone to achieving their healthcare objectives.
Advancing health transformation in the digital era involves a holistic technology approach for applications, data, infrastructure, and security from the point-ofcare to the cloud. Dell EMC is helping organisations in the region advance in the digital era, transforming the way they work so they can, in turn, transform the lives of the people they serve.
This transformation is marked by four key steps towards unlocking healthcare success:
Health IT transformation
Medical services need to respond rapidly to emergencies as well as pay close attention to individual cases. This requires the capability to deliver consistent high performance through operational efficiency and automated processes that are powered by technology. Today’s healthcare innovations are not going to run on yesterday’s infrastructure. The high influx of data demands health IT adapt faster and use modern IT infrastructure that meets ongoing demands such as in-place analytics, scale-out security and compliance, and business continuity.
Healthcare organisations are expected to provide new and improved patient care capabilities while also minimising cost. Cloud computing provides the IT foundation for businesses to reduce operational costs while satisfying the patient’s demand for instantaneous, top-quality access to healthcare services. It also allows for flexibility and scalability, and provides a platform for real-time collaboration and information sharing. The significant increase in digitisation of medical records and the prevalence of digital outputs from scanning and monitoring devices further maximises the benefits of the cloud as a platform.
Connected health
Connected health is more than just wearable devices or one-on-one telehealth consultations over a distance. It is a web of intelligent communication and actionable information that is shared to improve patient outcomes. It is enabled by a fabric of technology in which people, processes and devices are all connected and capable of working together, to improve staff efficiencies and foster better patient engagement.
According to a report from MarketResearch.com, the Internet of Things in health care is expected to reach $117 billion by 2020, while the mobile health, or mHealth, suite of devices, applications and services continues to reshape care delivery, with an estimated growth to $59.15 billion by 2020. This presents an opportunity for the implementation of specialised devices that securely connect caregivers and the medical workforce to their patients, and to the information needed to ensure better outcomes. By creating a digital workplace, the sector enjoys alternatives to site visits through virtual healthcare solutions.
Precision medicine
A strategic approach to capitalising data can lead to a world of possibilities. With clinical research data continuing to grow, IT must be ready to scale and handle data acquisition, storage, distribution and analysis, while adhering to regulations. Identifying trends and patterns through the analysis of richer and continuous streams of patient data has the potential to significantly improve outcomes.
With sophisticated solutions such as high-performance computing, high-powered servers and predictive health analytics such as data lake technology and data analytics tools, healthcare providers are well equipped to solve the most complex medical challenges, conduct sophisticated research, develop new insights and ultimately advance healthcare innovation.
Security transformation
The brave new world of IoT, or the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in this context, is taking shape in health care, and yet brings its own challenges. Until recently, medical devices were siloed, feeding data to a local screen or monitor, and not connected to wider networks. Now, with a growing web of interconnections among devices and systems across diverse networks, and with data transmitted across the Internet, the entire health industry – providers, patients, payers, and government agencies – needs to address a rapidly changing cyber-threat and attack landscape.
Healthcare data continues to be a top cyber-attack target and the increased targeting of healthcare systems has even helped to coin a new word for these cyber-attacks: “medjacking”. The first priority for all healthcare providers is to objectively evaluate risks and the state of existing security measures across people, processes and technologies. Providers then need the right tools to ensure patient safety, whether protecting from ransomware, Advanced Persistent Threats or insider threats, ensuring enhanced threat detection to improve backup efficiency and recovery times of clinical and enterprise data.
The promise of connected health is improved, simple, efficient communication and collaboration and the ability to make more informed decisions, based on better information that is presented at the right time and in the right context. The benefits are clear but the complexity and magnitude can be overwhelming. Taking purposeful action that can greatly reduce risk is definitely better than being stuck in an organisational “analysis paralysis”, which is why the right partner can make the difference in building an ecosystem for success.